Web.com Website Builder Review 2017

Do you fear building a website just because you lack the necessary programming skills?

Have you been delaying the conversion of a great idea for a website to avoid the burden of designing and hosting a website?

If so, then you will be happy to know that there are plenty of do-it-yourself (DIY) website builders available today that comes with readily available templates or themes to help you create a nice website.

And yes, this is possible without requiring you to write any piece of code and by simple dragging and dropping items using mouse clicks.

If you search for the popular drag-and-drop website builders, you will come across names, such as Weebly or Wix, which are pretty new to the industry and yet popular.

However, there are site builders offered by companies like Web.com, which is considered a veteran in the website development and hosting industry.

The Web.com website builder has been designed to fulfil the site design requirements of small- to medium-level businesses. At the same time, it also offers different features to build personal sites or perhaps a photography-based blog.

However, it is necessary for you to know how this Web.com site building tool matches up against some of the top site builders, such as Squarespace, Weebly or Wix.

So, we will provide you with an honest review of the Web.com website builder and discuss its features, plans and pricing, pros and cons, etc. The objective is to provide you with useful information about Web.com that we have gathered based on our research and prior experience of using it for a website previously.

Web.com Background

This company was founded way back in 1997 and has its headquarters in Florida, USA. The company’s vast experience in areas of website designing, hosting, and internet marketing and so on has helped them generate more than 3 million subscribers thus far.

Their DIY website builder tool has proved to be a decent option for individuals or small businesses wanting a simple and good looking website without having to bear the burden of coding.

They even offer you the option of getting your site built by them to stay free from the related stress. Since the company offers a variety of web services, you can avail several of those services, such as internet marketing, SEO and hosting, along with the Web.com site builder.

So, let’s study the various features offered by this Web.com site design software in detail.

Customer Support for the Web.com Site Builder

Irrespective of whether you are a complete novice handling the design of a new website or an experienced person, you may need timely technical support while using a site builder like Web.com.

Like some of the most reliable website builders, Web.com also offers you a huge pool of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), which you can peruse to get resolutions for your queries. You can also contact them to get guidance on using the Web.com site builder.

If you encounter any issues or problems while creating your site while using Web.com, you can contact their customer support team via phone or email.

The response time for your queries is quite decent and makes sure that you do not lose your patience for any emergency issues: you can rely on the technical support team to bail you out in time.

You can even contact them for tips about SEO writing or quality improvements for your site. Being in the industry for as long as they have been, Web.com definitely has the customer support area covered pretty well.

Web.com User Interface

One thing that could easily make you realise whether you have made the right choice for a site builder is the ease with which you can use it. The drag-and-drop What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor of the Web.com site builder is along the same lines as what you get with most reliable site builders.

However, while using the tool, you are bound to come across several bugs and these will not leave you with a pleasant experience. The site builder clearly falls short of expectations as far as an easy user interface is concerned. No one would want to get frequently stuck at different stages of their website creation and design.

Even though you will get access to several video tutorials that can guide you while you get used to this site builder, they are not as comprehensive as you would have hoped. So, you are bound to feel a little frustrated during the initial stages of using this site builder.

Web.com Website Design Capabilities

With this tool, you get access to a very wide range of site design templates. Who does not love to be spoilt for choice?

However, many of these templates vary from each other very slightly. In other words, they resemble each other a lot with only a few minor variations.

But, one thing is sure and that is that these templates are well designed to suit your needs and can be used as the base (or blueprint) upon which you build your dream website using various customisation options.

You can use the WYSIWYG text editor with numerous options to build the content for your site. If you are someone who gets easily confused with too many options, you may not like this text editor or even several other page element editors that are complex.

Web.com Website Mobility

You can definitely create a mobile version of your website with Web.com. However, you will soon realise that this mobile responsive feature is not a strong point for Web.com, which is pretty strange in this age of mobile revolution.

The mobile sites need to be maintained separately and you even have to pay for them.

Ecommerce Feature of Web.com

You can quickly set up your online store by choosing some good eCommerce templates offered by Web.com. You can start selling your products in no time and accept payments in various forms, such as credit cards and even PayPal. You may even select a payment processor, if you do not possess one.

However, it does offer you several robust features that could potentially boost your online business, for example, you can send marketing messages to your customers; you are allowed to generate customer blacklists, and you can create discount coupon codes or vouchers. You may even track codes to identify the scope for online advertisements.

Other Features of Web.com

Web.com helps you get SEO done for your website since you can avail their full SEO support service even though it comes at a cost. However, it does take care of both off-site and on-site optimisation, which could really help you come up in search engine results of Google, Yahoo and so on.

If you want to enhance your knowledge about SEO as well as track your site’s statistics, you can even enrol for any of the training programs offered by Web.com.

You can also create a blog to share your thoughts with the world using this site builder tool. It allows you to easily publish content posts, insert images, and so on.

Furthermore, it is possible for you to use the very modern email client of Web.com for enjoying a seamless emailing experience.

You also get access to a very large library of stock photos that you may choose to use for your website.

You can also make use of the free advertising credits for Google, Facebook and so on, to get increased number of visitors to your site and indirectly give a boost to your business.

Web.com Website Builder Plans and Pricing

Web.com offers a free website plan, but you have to pay for getting your site hosted. Also, you have to maintain your site after it goes live. Apart from this free plan, you can also make use of any of the three paid subscription packages for using the site builder tool along with other website services. Some of the common features of these three paid plans are listed below:

· Search engine submission of website to top search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing

· Business profile addition to different local search engines

Website, Marketing and Store

$3.95 per month (for the first month) and later $42.95 per month

· SEO consultation with Web.com experts,

· Search engine submission of website to top search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing

· Business profile addition to different local search engines

· Email marketing tools

· Secure shopping cart

· Credit card payment acceptance

· Online store for selling up to 500 products

Web.com Website Builder Advantages

A unique feature offered by the Web.com site builder is that it gives you the liberty to switch the theme or template of your website.

So, if you wish to change the look of your site after a certain period of time, you just need to select a new theme and the entire migration will be done easily with this tool. This service is not offered by many other popular website builders.

This tool seems to be ideal for small businesses that need support and guidance to improve their online presence with a host of services, such as SEO, search engine submission, free advertising credits and internet marketing.

Web.com Website Builder Disadvantages

The webpage element editors for this tool are quite complex to understand and they pose a problem for you if you do not like popups, since these editors appear as popup windows which force you to disable your browser’s popup blocker.

Even though this tool allows the creation of mobile responsive sites, you need to pay additional charges to get your site mobile friendly.

This tool does not offer a template customisation and so you have to browse through a lot of templates (with very small differences between them) in order to select the one that is right for you.

You cannot check out the features of this site builder on a free trial basis, which is a big handicap.

The paid subscription plans only look cheap because the introductory prices for the first month are really cheap. After the first month, the price per plan increases by at least 10 times, which is not clearly highlighted on the official website of Web.com.

The Web.com company seems to focus too much attention on sales and marketing, rather than on improving the site builder’s user interface and relevant experience. You are likely to find their frequent attempts to upsell things a bit frustrating.

Verdict

If you own a small business that needs all-round services to get a website built as well as market it online to get noticed, then the Web.com site builder tool may prove to be an ideal tool for you. However, if you are someone who has used other decent website builders previously, you may not like certain limitations of the Web.com tool.

We hope that the information shared in the above review of the Web.com website creator software helps you decide if this tool will be able to fulfil your site development requirements. Do you have any questions? Please feel free to leave your comments below and thanks for reading!